3D Graphics Programming with QuickDraw 3D 1.5.4

Renderer Methods

This section describes methods that a renderer can or must support.

Some of the methods described here are required, as noted below.

The renderer support methods include update methods and submit methods. An update method is called whenever the state has changed, before invoking a submit method in a renderer. A renderer will have many update methods that do little more than copy data or pointers into the renderer's private state.

Updates are not called in any particular order and therefore cross-state dependencies should not be resolved until a submit method is invoked.For example, every view has an attribute state and a shader state, each of which may contain a SurfaceShader object. The attribute SurfaceShader object (if not null ) overrides the shader object, because it is inherited deeper in a geometry. However, a renderer should not depend on these being called in any particular order. It should not keep one surfaceShader state variable and perform this inheritance in the update methods, because the behavior may vary.

Some exceptions apply. In particular, matrix updates are called in a specific order based on matrix dependencies. For example, LocalToWorld is always called before LocalToWorldInverse , as explained on [link] .

Update methods update only those items which have changed, and only those objects supported by a renderer are updated. In addition, updates are accumulated until a geometry, light, or camera is encountered; therefore data submitted to the view may never reach a renderer if it never applies to a geometry, light, or camera.

If the renderer supports the RendererPush and RendererPop methods, it must maintain its own state stack; updates are not called for changed data when the view stack is popped. See "Push and Pop Methods" for more information.

The following renderer submit functionality is discussed in "Submit Method" :



 
    TQ3XRendererSubmitGeometryMethod

The following renderer configuration functionalities are discussed in "Configuration Methods" :



 
    kQ3XMethodTypeRendererIsInteractive

    TQ3XRendererModalConfigureMethod

    TQ3XRendererGetNickNameStringMethod

    TQ3XRendererGetConfigurationDataMethod

    TQ3XRendererSetConfigurationDataMethod

The following renderer update functionalities are discussed in "Update Methods" :



 
    TQ3XRendererUpdateStyleMethod

    TQ3XRendererUpdateAttributeMethod

    TQ3XRendererUpdateShaderMethod

    TQ3XRendererUpdateMatrixMethod

The following renderer drawing state methods are discussed in "Drawing State Methods" :



 
    TQ3XRendererStartFrameMethod

    TQ3XRendererStartPassMethod

    TQ3XRendererFlushFrameMethod

    TQ3XRendererEndPassMethod

    TQ3XRendererEndFrameMethod

    TQ3XRendererCancelMethod

The following state stack functions are discussed in "Push and Pop Methods" :



 
    TQ3XRendererPushMethod

    TQ3XRendererPopMethod

The renderer support method TQ3XRendererIsBoundingBoxVisibleMethod, used to cull group and geometric objects, is described in "Renderer Cull Method" .